Ideally, a birth is a joyful event worth celebrating; whether it be the birth of a living creature or an idea.

The tragic reality is that many births are less than enthusiastically welcomed.

The December 6, 2011 birth of .XXX is a sad case in point.

Other than ICM Registry, who is genuinely excited — in a positive way — about the fact that .XXX is now available for sale to the general public?

Ouch.

This kid is going to grow up strange, assuming it lives long enough to grow up at all.

– Darklady

Opinion: XXX domains an obvious failure

I guess this turn of events was obvious to anyone with half a brain…

Read more here.

.XXX: The Hottest-Selling Unwanted Domains on the Web

Companies that have no interest whatsoever in Internet porn are lining up to purchase .xxx domains to protect their brands in what may be shaping up to be a debacle for ICANN. The group Morality in Media has even appealed to Congress to pass legislation that would give companies a say over the use of their names in the adult entertainment domain without having to buy protection…

Read more here.

ICM Registry / Go Daddy – .XXX – Denied My Trademark!

Unfortunately, we have been informed that your application has been determined to be invalid. Please be aware that the application fee is non-refundable…

Read more here.

Morality in Media Wants Congress To Make It A Crime To Register A .XXX Domain Matching Any Domain In Any Extension

In a statement, MIM President Patrick Trueman said, “Nearly every company in the world, every blogger, and the holders of any domain name must fear that the ICM Registry will allow their good name to be trashed on the .XXX domain unless they pay this ‘protection money’ to ICM Registry and its affiliated registrars.”

Read more here.

Morality in Media Calls for Federal Investigation of ICM Registry and All Involved in XXX Domain

News that the .XXX Domain is going live today caused Morality in Media to call for an investigation of ICM Registry, the company behind the .XXX Domain, for possible violations of federal laws prohibiting distribution of hard-core obscene Internet pornography.

Read more here.

Spread The Word!

Look, ICM Registry… Stuart… I know I’ve said some harsh things about you in the past… and I’ve meant them. Still do, actually, but I also feel compelled to give you some advice.

I know I am not currently richer than my wildest dreams of avarice (which are pretty wild) and I’ve neither conquered Tokyo nor saved the earth from flying saucers, but I’ve got some experience with sex, relationships, and the adult entertainment industry. My ability to articulate that experience in an entertaining yet informative manner is one of the reasons “they” pay me the Big Bucks.

Plus, whether you or I or anyone else likes it or not, you are now a member of the adult entertainment industry. Your character, such as it is, will forever bear the sweet perfume of pornography. As someone who’s been around many of the blocks you’re hoping to rent space to in your magical porn site resort/retirement center/whatever, I feel compelled to help the New Kid out at least a little bit.

As sad as I know we both must feel about it, I’m not likely to run into you in a pub anytime soon, thus being unable to hash things out with you over liquor or hops, and then drunkenly become BFFs. Because of this great tragedy, I’m going to offer you some relationship advice here on this website, which I know you’re at least passing aware exists.

Here it is:

You need to get over Manwin. Seriously. I don’t know what kind of hanky panky you two may have gotten into before, but it looks like you’re not going to be passing each other in the hall and nodding knowingly anytime soon. Not if you can avoid it. Not without witnesses and/or cameras. Manwin is just not that into you.

There are lots of us who don’t plan to invest in your Sherman Antitrust Act legal challenge in the making. Some of us own a lot of web properties and some of us only own a few. Some of us have gotten our virtual .XXX tubes tied in order to make sure there are no little us’s running around in your gated community. We have reputations to protect, after all. Some of us are hoping we can whistle past the .XXX graveyard without incident.

But Manwin? Yeah, Manwin doesn’t like you and doesn’t care who knows. If this were the ancient past, your name would be erased from the pyramids. If this were the Soviet Union, your image would disappear from photos. If this were a meat world relationship, you’d have been served with a restraining order.

Instead, it’s just business. You know how it is.

Actually, according to a press release the company distributed on Friday, it’s not business… or at least not doing business… with you or yours.

There’s a certain poetic beauty to this situation. On multiple levels. It’s like a karmic legal haiku. With boobs. But for the situation at hand, the poetic beauty lies with the fact that the tenants of the exclusive porn “resort” that ICM Registry promises to be, were likely hoping to do trade with the outside virtual world, if for no other reason than to generate some upsell traffic, especially early in the TLD launch process.

Tube sites, as the actual adult industry knows, can be a scourge and a blessing, depending on which side of the law they decide to operate on. When they wear white hats, they can be a gateway to new members for the production companies and individuals featured in their collection.

But .XXX is going to be a goldmine for everyone who buys land there. Who needs access to a network that has 60 million users passing through it daily? That’s going to be chickenfeed compared to the flying cars and robot slaves that members of the hyperspace exclusive “resort” community will find awaiting them.

After all, it’s about protecting children, right? That is why it’s a good thing for everyone that there won’t be any Manwin content on .XXX and there won’t be any .XXX content on Manwin’s sites. If it were otherwise, there would be just that much more porn on the internet and just that much more competition for precious resources.

It’s better this way. For everyone. For the children.

Besides, it’s going to happen a lot, so you might want to plan accordingly.

– Darklady

Manwin Permanently Bans All Business With .XXX TLD

By permanently blocking the .XXX domain, Manwin hopes to send a clear message that it does not support ICM or .XXX.

Spread The Word!

Thursday was Thanksgiving in the US and the adult entertainment industry has something ironic to be thankful for: ICM Registry is being sued in the hopes of its .XXX TLD effectively being declared an antitrust crime scene.

As those who have been following along may recall, ICM Registry is the company that forced the .XXX TDL on the world in a selfless effort to protect children from porn by making it easier to find, adult website subscribers from mythical mass malware infestations, and company CEO Stuart Lawley from a life of poverty, all by making him filthy rich off of the fear he can inspire in both adult and mainstream trademark holders and brand developers.

ICM Registry insists it’s not part of the adult industry and that is one of the few things I agree with it about. Given its utter disinterest in the actual needs of the businesses it wants to be internet overlord of, as well as its contempt for the industry in general, all I can see it as is a largely ungrateful parasite.

Given the online location, perhaps “malicious virus” would be a better analogy.

This is about money. There’s nothing wrong with it being about money, of course. We are, if nothing else, an especially Capitalist-lovin’ arm of the entertainment industry. But this isn’t just about our money; it’s about the money of anyone who feels threatened by the presence of .XXX and how it might affect their reputation and livelihood — and their ability to maintain them.

Mainstream film producers, retail businesses, schools, colleges, family-friendly theme parks, and other institutions and professional entities that have nothing to do with erotic entertainment, services, or products have expressed deep concern that, if they don’t purchase as many .XXX domains as they own identities that they want to protect, they may very well lose business, public trust, and the right to defend their trademarks.

Luxembourg-based Manwin and California-centric Digital Playground have decided that they’ve had enough.

ICM Registry launched its official Buy website recently and has cagily asserted that its sales are, “comfortably into the six figures in terms of domains,” while not naming any names. If it and ICANN find themselves in court, that may well change.

Manwin, which has its own colorful past, has stated what most everyone else in the industry has stated; that .XXX puts “an unnecessary cost on everybody, without benefit for the adult entertainment community.”

Remember, the whole point of a TLD is to benefit its target community; in this case, the individuals, businesses, and related properties within the adult entertainment community. According to ICM Registry, that’s at least $60 per website purchase worth of benefit, with a $100 – $200 per website registration fee worth of additional benefits… regardless of whether you own an adult business or just don’t want anyone using your trademarked name for one.

Unless, as the complaint claims, you are one of the more than 4,000 celebrities, dignitaries, and locations whose names need not fear being so besmirched, because they have been blocked from sale.

For free.

Whether they hold a trademark or not.

Everyone without a trademark – or with a trademark pending – must wait until December 6 for their first-come/first-served general availability chance to defensively register.

In addition to the money-suck, which — contrary to popular mainstream opinion — is not as painless to the industry’s members as repeatedly claimed, the last thing we need is a business trying to simultaneously marry and distance itself from porn, all while stirring up hate and discontent everywhere it goes.

What Manwin and Digital Playground are asking seems entirely reasonable to me; that ICANN place an injunction on .XXX domains until they become available competitively with “reasonable price constraints.”

In other words, don’t try to pick our pockets just because we work in the adult industry – and don’t try to use the fact that we work in the adult industry as a way to scare businesses and people who don’t.

Naturally, the insufferable Lawley has responded with the tact and delicacy that we’ve come to expect, once again schooling those he hopes to lighten of their cash by insisting that Manwin and Digital Playground, “show an apparent lack of understanding of the ICANN process and the rigorous battle we went through with ICANN over eight years in full public scrutiny to gain approval.”

Given that ICM Registry has kept the target TLD community largely in the dark concerning the companies and numbers associated with the new domain extension, grumbling about scrutiny and making claims about transparency seems misplaced.

If allegations of “… monopolistic conduct, price gouging, and anti-competitive and unfair practices…” against ICM Registry stick, the company may have more than a few real reasons to grumble.

In the meantime, Lawley continues to brag about the millions of registrations and dollars that he anticipates making each year – all while the struggling industry upon which he feeds gets accused of having bottomless cash resources.

For more specifics, read the complaint.

Spread The Word!

Upon first blush, a .xxx sTLD sounds like a brilliant idea.

But once one factors in the real world implications of such an easily blocked, censored, marginalized, and manipulated domain suffix, it becomes far less appealing.

When a business with no ties to the online adult entertainment industry decides to “protect” it by cornering the market, aggressively pushing for the domain, rewriting history, treating our representatives and press with marginal respect, brushing our concerns aside, charging $60 per registration — and telling us we’re lucky that the price is that low — even beer goggles don’t make it look kissable.

For these and other reasons, we believe that, in spite of panicked domain preregistrations, the voice of the industry is soundly raised in opposition to what would ultimately become Stuart Lawley and the ICM Registry’s company store.

The purpose of this website is to give “the other side” a soapbox upon which to stand while making its voice heard.

– Darklady

Spread The Word!

I keep reading press releases and articles about how fabulous it is for the adult entertainment industry that ICM Registry is making the kind of bank on domain sales that has not been seen since the initial .com virtual land rush. $500,000 for a .XXX domain? $200,000?

We’re not even talking about the huge investment that some businesses would need to make in order to secure all of their .com properties in the .XXX frontier… er… resort.

That money isn’t going into the pockets of anyone in the adult entertainment industry, as far as I’m concerned; its going into the pockets of Stuart Lawley, ICM Registry, and the few people they graciously hire and pay. Oh, and race cars.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t consider ICM Registry to be part of the industry. I see it as run by an opportunistic and stubborn man (both of which are traits that I can admire) who is doing what he’s doing not because he wants to clean up the internet, protect kids from porn, protect surfers from harmful .com smut cooties, or help elevate the reputation of sex workers or those who employ them. I believe Lawley is a clever Capitalist who has seen what he believes is a lucrative way to cash in on this internet sex thing.

And I have no problem with that. We all came from somewhere.

But one of the keys to long-term success in any venture, but certainly one in the world of professionally naked ambition, is to be able to work and play well with others. I don’t see that as being a trait that ICM Registry or its master possess.

For those of us who don’t buy the claim that ICM Registry is going to be some kind of protecting shepherd of our brands and reputations, I present both a hilarious (and yes, naughty) Seth MacFarlane cartoon and some serious advice from Diane Duke, director of the Free Speech Coalition, the trade association for the adult entertainment industry.

– Darklady

Sheering Time! — Seth MacFarlane

Buyers Beware: FSC Guide to Purchasing .XXX

The Free Speech Coalition is the national trade organization to the adult entertainment industry. Its mission is to lead, protect and support the growth and well-being of the adult entertainment community.

Spread The Word!

Everybody’s favorite reason to hate .XXX (aka Stuart Lawley) has had a lot to say about how those of us who work and play within the adult entertainment industry don’t know what we’re talking about when we talk about the adult entertainment industry.

Or the internet.

Or marketing our product.

Or much of anything else, including and especially .XXX — which he’s assured us will change the way the world sees pornography, sexuality, internet commerce, and his brilliance.

Alas for the real world of .XXX consumers, that doesn’t seem to be universally the case. Most of those who’ve ponied up the big bucks have either confessed to doing so out of professional fear of losing their brand’s integrity or haven’t admitted it to anyone other than perhaps their priest, mistress, or beer buddies.

Finally, a brave voice in the online wilderness has raised itself above the hype. Hopefully it will inspire others to come forward, as well.

Let’s keep speaking truth to arrogance!

– Darklady

Another Example that . XXX Domains are a Screw Job

We were then told by the registrar that janeyweb.xxx AND the second domain we were ‘interested in’ were blocked so they couldn’t buy them for us.

Read more about Janey’s screw-job from ICM Registry on Adult GYI.

Spread The Word!

Sorry to vanish for so long and leave you update-less. While it gives me great joy to point at the feet of clay that ICM Registry lurches throughout the globe on, it doesn’t pay the bills, so I’ve had to be Capitalistic in my own adult industry kinda way.

You know, by actually working with and within the industry, as opposed to merely being a parasite feeding off of it while claiming to be doing so for the host’s own good.

Although this is a fairly fluffy update, I have an insane number of links to articles about what ICM Registry has been up to lately, including yet more smack-talk from Stuart Lawley directed toward Diane Duke, the executive director of the Free Speech Coalition (adult industry trade association) during XBIZ EU, Morality in Media’s predictable complaints, the Founders Program, .XXX blocking, the launch itself, PETA, and whether it’s worth the effort or even necessary to try to protect a brand from ICM Registry.

But for now, let’s focus on speedboats because, you know, they have so much to do with porn websites. In a Freudian way. Kinda.

ICM Registry long ago promised to promote the .XXX brand to the mainstream with new and innovative methods. Many of us in the flesh mines wondered what the hell that meant in plain English… and now we know: sponsoring speedboat racers.

Of course! Why didn’t the rest of us think of that years ago? Obviously, speedboat racers will want their own branded websites in the .XXX zone! And the stands (do they have stands at a boat race?) are packed with fans ready, eager, and willing to either buy their own grotesquely over-priced .XXX sites (to help support speedboat racers, obviously) or invest heavily in the few sites that are currently there.

Sure. It could happen. This might be a stroke of rare brilliance that will bring the entire mainstream world of watersports, if you will, to a new realization about the adult entertainment industry and its appropriate place in the grand scheme of internet things.

Or, some individual(s) or group(s) with a (most likely) extreme right wing agenda will grab onto the subject and howl to the media about how porn is rubbing itself off in the faces of the innocent, including young and impressionable speedboat fans and family members.

Which, of course, could still accomplish the obvious task of spreading the good word about ICM Registry’s attempt to clean up the internet by adding more porn to it.

It’s possible that ICM Registry will benefit from the investment, but it seems unlikely that the overall adult industry will get much out of it.

– Darklady

ICM Registry to sponsor world champion powerboat racer Mike Seebold.

ICM Registry, the company behind the new .xxx top level domain name, is entering world class powerboat racing with world champion driver Mike Seebold to compete at this year’s Off Shore World Championships in Key West, Florida…

To learn more, visit Domain Wire

Also, MarketWire.com

Spread The Word!

It’s no secret that porn depends upon social stereotypes and cliches for much of its power.

It’s not that we actually believe that our hot secretary, smoldering boss, sexy babysitter, studly frat boy friend, or neighborhood Officer Friendly secretly yearns to take us or give themselves over entirely to our deepest, most secret, sexual desires.

It’s not that we honestly think women are shipped directly from the manufacturing plant with 38 DDD boobs and eternally patient cum-hungry tongues or that men are unloaded from their space ships sporting long-lasting 9-inch erections and a polite interest in cunnilingus — but, like it or not, those are all cliches that we’re familiar with.

Porn is, after all, fantasy.

When it comes to the technology supporting the fantasy, though, I admit that I like it to be based on science.

Science is what gets the bits from there to here. Science is what makes sure I can see very pore regardless of how invisible its wearer wishes it were. Science is what allows me to assure a webmaster that since I have a VISA card, I must be an adult. Science is what protects my computer from ugly bugs, zombies, and other nasty things that go bump through my hard drive.

Science is also what has repeatedly proven the internet stereotype of porn sites being packed with computer-borne diseases to be FALSE.

Yeah, sure, there are plenty of low-level porn sites or sites pretending to be porn sites that should only be visited while wearing a full computer-system/body condom, but you’ve probably got a better chance of getting crabs from that cutie you picked up outside of the bowling alley last week during half-price night than of needing to reformat your hard drive after visiting your favorite cat-juggling midget bondage site.

But that doesn’t mean that our close personal friends at ICM Registry and .XXX aren’t planning to fan the flames of anti-porn prejudice in order to line their pockets, feather their nests, and convince both porn lovers and porn producers that the only way to avoid a cache full of cyber-syphilis is to visit their sites, which theoretically practice safer coding than domains that cost 10 times less to register.

What super power will ICM Registry and its .XXX sites manifest in order to keep its sheep as white as snow? Why, a free McAfee SECURE anti-spyware subscription, of course! That’s a $360 savings, according to The Register. Heck, that makes the first year of one .XXX website registration more than break even, no matter how much the domain fleecing costs. (I’m reading $75 – $130 registration prices bandied about these days, with a mere $60 of that going to ICM.)

Bundling online security software into a purchase isn’t unusual these days, with many ISPs and broadband providers doing so. McAfee is certainly a brand name people will recognize, but regardless of what the company website has to say about the product, nobody who doesn’t work for the McAfee seems to be impressed by its ability to deal with spyware. As an anti-virus software producer, it’s got plenty of fans, but review after review reports that McAffee is barely competent when it comes to keeping malware out of our precious anal high-wire ballerina photo collections.

I don’t want to seem ungrateful to Uncle ICM for spending $8 million on a daily sweep of the .XXX neighborhood looking for bandits, but I’d be more impressed if it wasn’t a rent-a-cop doing the snooping, especially if I have to install McAfee’s SiteAdvisor plug-in and/or a “trust mark” to fully benefit from the massive uptick in conversions that the company insists will be mine.

Out of curiosity, if malware does somehow manage to get onto a site, who’s responsible? McAfee? ICM Registry? The dirty porno schmuck who paid $130 for a spot in the gated .XXX red-light community that’s supposed to come with a trustworthy security guard?

– Darklady

New Survey Reveals Misconceptions About Security Measures

* When my PC is infected, I will notice in one way or another (93%)
* Free AV software offers the same elements of security as paid for packages (83%)
* Most malware is spread through e-mail (54%)
* You can’t get infected just by loading an infected website (48%)
* Most malware is spread through downloads at peer2peer and torrent sites (48%)
* It is more likely to encounter malware at a porn site than at a horseback riding site (37%)
* My firewall can protect my PC from drive-by-download attacks (26%)
* I don’t visit risky sites, so I am safe from drive-by-downloads (13%)
* If you don’t open an infected file, you can’t get infected (22%)
* Most malware is spread through USB sticks (13%)
* Cyber criminals aren’t interested in the PCs of consumers (8%)…

To read more, visit: IT Business Edge

For more about ICM Registry’s new offering, check out: ICM Registry to Provide Free Malware Scanning for all .XXX Domains

ICM Registry and McAfee to Validate .XXX Domains

Spread The Word!

It seems like it was only the beginning of May when ICM Registry proudly announced the hiring of industry veterans Chris Lebrun and Pete Housley as its sales team.

That’s because it was.

It seems like it wasn’t even the end of May when ICM Registry and Lebrun split the sheets and went their separate ways.

That’s because it wasn’t.

If industry scuttlebutt on GFY or the XBiz are any indication, the first move didn’t earn Lebrun any new friends and the second move didn’t redeem him. Other than saying he is satisfied with “the terms” of his separation and wishes ICM Registry “the best of luck,” he hasn’t had much to say publicly about the matter.

Perhaps this is reflective of the “no committment (sic) and 100% confidential” Founders Program policy he ever-so-briefly tried to sell the online adult world on.

How things are going with the company’s other new hires, including the kind-of-surprising-but-not-really-given-her-recent-behavior April hire of Joan Irvine (formerly CEO of the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection) as the first executive director of IFFOR.

Irvine’s new job title is already earning her negative reviews from long-time members of the industry… and it will be interesting to see if ASACP becomes the promised recipient of a percentage of .XXX registration fees, as per ICM Registry’s promise to “protect children.”

Of course, it will also be interesting (at least to me) to see how my continued updating and opining on this site will affect consideration of my application as a free speech advocate for IFFOR. It’s true, I sent one in. Might as well venture into the belly of the beast and find out what’s really going on… assuming the beast has the stomach for such a thing.

– Darklady

Spread The Word!

It has begun — and who, except for everyone, anticipated that it would begin like this?

And by “this,” I naturally mean with a feverish money grab into the pockets of anyone and everyone with a trademark to defend.

Talk about making decisions with a financial gun to our head! Whether you don’t want a .XXX domain because you own the “Happiest Place on Earth” or urge others to “Just Do It, or you think the idea of a .XXX sTLD is a bad one in general or just don’t want/can’t afford to pay the insane registration prices that are being bandied about — all you have to do is pay $300 – $650 per URL to make sure no one else gets to register a website with your name on it.

Seems fair, right? $300+ for… nothing. That’s got to feel extra good to the mainstream company with multiple trademarks that have nothing to do with porn. Way to improve the reputation of the adult entertainment industry, registrars.

At least it’s a one-time fee, unlike the annual renewal costs you can expect if you buy into the .XXX mythos. Depending on which of the 60 provisionally approved registrars you use (check out the links below and/or in the sidebar for more details), you could be paying anywhere between $75 and $100 per domain. Some registrars are offering bulk discounts, which seems weird given that Stuart Lawley assured the forum audience on XBiz.net that there would be no bulk prices, no discounts for non-profits, no special deals.

Ah, well. It’s the worst recession in the history of the United States. Perhaps these kind technical benefactors have relented and decided to grace their more well-heeled flock with a few vaguely noticeable bargains, after all.

Mensches, every man jack of them.

– Darklady

Dot-xxx Price Wars Begin

For owners of non-trademarked domains in other domain spaces who wish to “grandfather” their domains in dot-xxx during Sunrise, volume-based prices will run $199.99, $179.99 and $149.99, respectively. The grandfather prices also will apply to the Landrush phase…

To read more, visit: Dot-xxx Price Wars Begin

More Links: Read ‘em and weep:

Protecting Trademarks in the New .XXX Domain Name Release

$300 to block your trademark from ‘.xxx’ – but that’s the tip of the iceberg

Up to $650 for a .xxx domain – or to keep your name off one

Trademark Owners .XXX Opt-out Fee Hovers at $300

.XXX Domain Pricing From $75

Domainmonster.com to Charge $75 and Up for .XXX Domains

Spread The Word!